Bernd Zangerl and 'Viva la evolution'

Bernd Zangerl frees 'Viva la evolution' hard F8c

The young Austrian boulderer Bernd Zangerl has for some time now been at the cutting edge of this sport, shooting to fame last year with the first repeat of mythical "Dreamtime", the first 8c in the world set up by Fred Nicole. On 9 August 2002 he went one step further with his "Viva la evolution", a boulder problem at 2300m close to Flirsch in the Tyrol. Bernd described it as being a "hard" 8c, and seeing that he fell off the final dyno more than 40 times, we'll take his word for it! But was hard really mean? This is what Bernd had to say about his dream line.

How hard is 'Viva la evolution'? It's without a doubt the hardest problem I've ever done. The amount of time I needed to do it was enormous: in summer 2000 I couldn't even do all the moves, despite the fact that at the time I was climbing F8a. Obviously everything is really subjective, but for me the first eight moves were really hard and, unlike Dreamtime, without a break. The crux comes after these first 8 moves and its three moves long. Compared to other moves such as 'La proue' and 'Massive attack', these three moves alone would be 8b.

What was the hardest? In the beginning I definitely wasn't strong enough, but this year it was only a problem psychologically. And it's because of this it's really hard to give a proper grade. I know how important the mind is - at a certain point you memorise all the moves and then when you make an attempt, your brain immediately tells you if something isn't right... and by then it's usually too late.

If 'Viva la evolution' is a hard 8c, what do you expect from an 8c+? I don't think that the holds can get much smaller, so the moves will have to be intense and without rests, like two short 8b's put together with only 4-6 moves, or a few moves to an 8b+. The length will be an important factor: lot's of short hard moves will be the future. of course the opposite could happen , too. The boulder problems could get longer and longer, until you reach a sort of "boulder-route". 'Evolution', how much more can we expect? As I said before, the holds can't get much smaller, but obviously there's still a lot of space left for evolution. At the latest with the new generation, but Ive already se3en some problems that should be doable in the next few years. The evolution won't be that quick though, ad today's grades still need to be confirmed. I think that one can talk about an easy 8c and a hard 8c... there's still a lot of space left for development.